About the work
Liebe und Eifersucht (Love and Jealousy) is a Singspiel in three acts, composed by E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1807 to his own libretto. He based the text on August Wilhelm Schlegel's translation of Calderón's cloak-and-dagger comedy La banda y la flor. Hoffmann was unable to get the work staged during his lifetime; the score was considered lost for more than 150 years until it resurfaced at the Berlin State Library, with his libretto found in the Würzburg city archive. Schott published the opera in 1999, and its posthumous premiere took place on 27 July 2008 at the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele.
Plot
In Florence, several couples become entangled in disguises and misread tokens of love, spinning a web of jealousy and mistaken identity until, in the end, all the confusions resolve and the right couples find each other.
Cultural significance
Critics have described the score as audibly influenced by Mozart, competently and knowledgeably crafted, without reaching the individuality of Hoffmann's later opera Undine. The work nonetheless rounds out the small but distinct body of compositions by a man otherwise known chiefly as a writer.